Criticism / Feedback

Comparison with Alpha Playtest

At first glance, it might be easy to say that the game’s ratings are about on par if not slightly worse than what we got for Alpha. However, this fails to take into account the changes that we’ve made to the game since. For example, game clarity and flow both fared slightly worse this time round, and I believe that could be thanks to the incomplete implementation of the game’s maps that we had to rush towards the end of beta. This led to an incomplete puzzle section with little to no direction for the player to find it. Additionally, some qualitative feedback from players informed us of (a known) bug where attacks do not cover the entire train, making dodging some attacks completely trivial. This is very easily rectified with some invisible (or visible) barriers that keep the player in bounds.

The lack of change in difficulty and enjoyment are a positive. It would seem that we are still on a desirable trajectory as we enter into gold standard and only need to worry about asset implementation and bug fixing for the most part, along with changing the starting segment to be more clear.

Quantitative Data

Analysing the beta quantitative data by itself still reveals much of what has already been discussed. The lack of clarity is most likely due to our rushed map implementation and incomplete puzzle section. Discussions have already been held on if we should swap the puzzle out for a simple switch flip / fade to black, essentially cutting the first person / overworld segment to save on time and focus more on the core gameplay loop, something that was recommended to us by industry in our beta industry call. Additionally, I believe the clarity / goal of the game will become a lot more clear as we continue to implement more assets and replace placeholders / primitives.

Qualitative Data

Despite specific prompting in the questions, we didn’t get a lot of justification behind each tester’s opinions on the game. While this is a shame, their comments still provide insight into some of the issues TDR faces. For example, the gold rain / “colum” attack and the laser attack both use the same warning. This results in the player not knowing which is which, and almost always being hit on the very first attack. This is an obvious clarity issue, and is easily rectified by having a triangle spawn that points in the direction that the attack will come from. Another issue that was mentioned (and was known) was the lack of barriers / bounds that prevent the player from walking away from the conductor to avoid attacks. This is easily rectified by placing either invisible or even visible barriers (such as rubble) to prevent the player from getting out of bounds. One piece of feedback that I am quite interested in is the idea of placing a healthbar on-top of the player rather than in the bottom right during the dodging segment. This is something I may consider if I find the time during gold standard to implement.

Feedback Review Chart

Feedback Review Document

Reflection

While some of the responses for this playtest still lack detail (not without effort to get it), they provide some valuable insights and will be taken into account going forward into gold standard. Our game still fared well with audiences, and through some effort may end up being one of the most complete games by the end of production. Issues we need to focus on are clarity and flow, which go hand in hand with one-another. Fixing clarity issues will lead to better flow, and vice-versa. Our main issues to fix are making the conductor’s attacks more obvious and fair, rebalancing attacks to benefit the player more (some reviewers didn’t realise attacks had different effects, showing they didn’t know to take the time to hover their mouse over the attack submenu buttons), and completely changing the starting section (perhaps even cutting it entirely). Overall, I’m happy with the feedback we have gotten and still feel confident in the trajectory our game is going in.